How to Set Up Klaviyo for Your Wine Club (Using Awtomic's Native Integration)

Awtomic has a native Klaviyo integration. You enter your Klaviyo public API key, Awtomic starts firing subscription lifecycle events, and Klaviyo receives rich member data — shipment details, product images, billing information, member tenure. Most merchants set this up once, confirm a test event arrived, and never go back.

That's a missed opportunity. The same data that made you say "neat" in the integration settings screen is the foundation for email flows that directly reduce churn and recover passive cancellations. Here's what you should actually build.

What Awtomic sends to Klaviyo

Three events are confirmed in Awtomic's documentation, with likely additional events for cancellation, pause, and reactivation:

• Subscription Created — Fires when a new member activates. Contains full subscription data: club name, products, variants, pricing, delivery frequency, next billing date, shipping address, and a secureLink (passwordless portal URL) for use in email CTAs.
• Subscription Upcoming Order — Fires before billing. Contains a preview of what's in the upcoming shipment, including line items with product images. The most underused event in Awtomic.
• Subscription Failed Payment — Fires on billing failure. Includes paymentErrorCode (e.g., card_declined, card_expired, insufficient_funds) and paymentErrorMessage — granular enough to write different emails for different failure types.

The 6 flows to build

1. Welcome flow (trigger: Subscription Created)

The highest-leverage email you'll ever send. Members are most engaged with your brand in the 48 hours after joining. This is your moment to:

• Confirm the membership with enthusiasm — not a transaction receipt
• Introduce the winery story and the people behind the wine
• Set expectations: when their first shipment arrives, what's in it
• Give them the portal link (use the secureLink from the event) so they know how to manage their membership

Timing: Send immediately. A 10-minute delay while your welcome series "warms up" is fine; a 24-hour delay is not. Members who get a warm welcome within the first hour have meaningfully higher 90-day retention.

Series length: 3 emails — immediate confirmation, Day 3 "here's what to expect," Day 7 "your first shipment is X weeks away."

2. Upcoming order notification (trigger: Subscription Upcoming Order)

This is the single most valuable flow most Awtomic merchants aren't running. Here's why it matters:

The most common complaint in wine club customer service is: "I didn't know my shipment was about to process." Members are surprised by charges that feel unexpected — even if they signed up knowing the cadence. An upcoming order email eliminates the surprise, invites engagement (build-a-box customization), and dramatically reduces the "I didn't authorize this" chargebacks that quietly erode your relationship with your payment processor.

What to include:

• The specific bottles in their upcoming shipment — with product images (available in the event data)
• The billing date and amount
• A link to customize their box if you have build-a-box enabled
• A skip or pause option (with the secureLink deep link) if they can't receive this shipment

Timing: 7 days before billing. Some merchants also send a 3-day reminder.

3. Payment failed — card expired (trigger: Subscription Failed Payment, filter: paymentErrorCode = "card_expired")

The most recoverable failure type. The member has a new card but hasn't updated it. The email: "Your Visa ending in 4821 has expired — update your payment info to keep your shipment on track."

Be specific. "Update your card" performs worse than "Your card ending in XXXX has expired." Specificity signals that this is a real notification, not spam.

4. Payment failed — general decline (trigger: Subscription Failed Payment, filter: other codes)

For card_declined, insufficient_funds, do_not_honor: frame this as a "payment issue" rather than naming the specific failure code. "We had trouble processing your order" is less embarrassing than "insufficient funds." Include the specific bottles they're at risk of missing — loss aversion is real and it works.

Series: Day 0, Day 3, Day 7. Three emails total. After Day 7 with no response, consider a personal outreach from the tasting room — not automated.

5. Post-cancel win-back (trigger: Subscription Cancelled, if Awtomic fires this event)

Timed 30, 60, and 90 days after cancellation. The tone shifts over time: 30 days is "we miss you," 90 days is "here's something new we think you'd love." Include seasonal relevance — harvest, holiday — to give the outreach a reason to land when it does.

6. Membership anniversary (trigger: time-based segment in Klaviyo)

Build a Klaviyo segment of members whose subscription start date is 1 year (or 2, 3, 5 years) prior. Send a personal milestone email: "You've been a [Club] member for one year." This isn't a transactional email — it's relationship maintenance. Include a thank-you offer (early access, a small gift on their next shipment) to reinforce that tenure is valued.

How to verify your events are firing

In Awtomic settings → Integrations → Klaviyo: there's a "Send test events" option that fires all configured Awtomic events to your Klaviyo account with sample data. Check Klaviyo → Activity Feed after sending — you should see events arrive within 1–2 minutes. If they don't, verify your public API key is correct and that your Klaviyo account is on a plan that supports events (all paid plans do).

One thing most guides get wrong

Klaviyo's default flow templates are built for generic e-commerce. "Your order has shipped" templates don't fit wine club cadence — quarterly billing, seasonal relevance, member relationships. Write the copy from scratch, starting from hospitality rather than retail. The best wine club emails read like they're from the winemaker, not from an automated system. That distinction is what separates 42% open rates from 18%.

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Garde's cancel flow works alongside your Klaviyo flows — when a member initiates a cancellation in the portal, Garde intercepts before Klaviyo's post-cancel sequence fires, attempting to save the membership first.